What EU3 game settings can I use to encourage larger AI nations?

Question

When creating a new game, how should the settings (difficulty, AI aggressiveness, etc ...) be chosen to encourage the AI to form large nations that don't tend to split apart? (I'd like to face bigger opponents.) If it matters, I'm playing divine wind, but I imagine this answer is largely the same across different versions.

Answer 1

That is a tricky question without a good and definite answer. I suppose you want more challenge from the game and only large nations could provide it. You can find lot of debates about this on various forums. First impulse would be to raise everything to hardest for you, but it is not always true as it affects other nations and AI choices as well.

One option I kept seeing around is to actually disable inflation. While it may give you some boost also, this will also keep large nations in late game. AI will use minting to build infrastructure and armies. With inflation on, it is more likely that expanding nation will crush afterwards due to overhelming inflation. Increasing the game difficulty means some bonuses for AI, but it is more directed against you than AI vs AI. Also, agressivnes can be under debate, as more aggressivnes means some countries will eat up others, but lower aggressivnes means AI will be more carefull and not declare unwinnable war. But if your goal is to get large nations for battling in the late game, I suppose increased aggressivness is preferred.

Another advice that may seem too obvious: don't start with large or lucky nation :) Also, some nations are programmed to have expanding strategy to reflect the history. For example, France will slowly swallow its vassals and then Burgundy. Castille will swallow Aragon and maybe even Portugal. Muscowy will make war against other Russian states and against Golden Horde. Poland and Lithuania will also try to spread as Golden Horde gets weaker. Austria and Bohemia will try to keep Emperor seat and force HRE minors into marriages and expand by inheriting.

So, choosing a country that is not large and is not programmed to increase, and is perhaps not immediately someone's target so you have some time to icrease yourself, and then letting those countries increase and strengthen up should give you enough work in the late game.